FRIDAYS AT UKFAST – 29th Aug

29 August 2014 by Jenn Granger

Congratulations survivors – it’s been a long week, but things are looking up because hey guess what, it’s Friday! This week we’ve looked at the BYOD basics, had some hilarious new gTLDs, and discovered exactly what vulnerability scanning is. Now, in the wise words of Taylor Swift, it’s time to shake it off and say hiiii to the weekend!

Our digital handwriting

A Swedish company has found a way to look at ‘behavioural biometrics’, which basically means that when we type on our phones it’s actually possible to recognise that it’s us. Apparently everything from how hard we type, to the length of our fingers, to how we hold the phone creates a unique way of telling the phone that you’re you.

It’s potentially the next step in the evolution of cybersecurity as it can’t be copied or forgotten. It’s been trialled in a Danish Bank and so far has been 99.7% accurate. The implications in spying-type situations are huge too, as it could tell you if someone else has used your phone. Maybe the age of passwords will be over sooner than we thought…

Tweet analytics

Every time you send a tweet out into the world you wait with bated breath, wondering if those 140 characters will be the ones that finally lead you to fame. Well, wonder no longer, because now Twitter’s analytics board is open for everyone! Until now only advertisers and the like were able to access the analytics, but there wasn’t anything similar for non-paid tweets.

You can also get tips from their findings – apparently consistency is key – and it offers loads of handy data like how many impressions and engagements the tweet has received, and compares the data month by month so you can (hopefully) watch your twitter army grow!

Facebook cracks down on click-bait

Facebook has decided to try and stop users’ feeds being swamped with headlines that are just trying to get a click out of you! Click-bait includes things like headlines along the lines of “OMG you’ll never believe what happened next!!” (you know the ones). By measuring the bounce rate (how quickly people ‘bounce’ away from the site), FB will assume that the link was under fulfilling on its headline and therefore probably click-bait. The danger there is that it could probably end up blocking boring links too – not that that’s necessarily a bad thing!

All of this involves performing a bit of magic with the algorithms so that we eventually see less of them and it stops – in theory –our newsfeeds being swamped with junk. They hope it’ll help publishers of content become clearer about what we’re about to read, which studies have shown that people prefer. Peeps who continue to post click-bait will be penalised, so be warned!

Sims get emosh

You might have kids who love it, or spent a fair few hours on it yourself when you were younger, but the new Sims has stepped up its game. Sims 4 has introduced complex emotions to the characters – you can choose personality traits as well as physical ones when you’re building your character (gloomy romantic, hotheaded creative etc.) – which means they could spend more time in a strop, flirting, or in the depths of depression.

The architecture is meant to be even more impressive, and the sims themselves can multitask, which makes playing even more fast paced and layered. The impact it will have on the game is interesting, to see whether players will feel kinder toward their characters when there’s a visible effect on their emotions (and will maybe stop locking them in rooms and brutally murdering them); and whether this becomes more common in other games too could mean it’s a bit of a game-changer!